----------------------------- GENET-news -----------------------------
TITLE: Activists say rich nations promoting GM foods
SOURCE: Reuters
DATE: February 29, 2000
-------------------- archive: http://www.gene.ch/ --------------------
Activists say rich nations promoting GM foods
EDINBURGH - Environmentalists and activists accused the world's rich
nations on Monday of stage-managing a global conference on
genetically modified foods to calm public fears. Activists said a
three-day Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) conference on GM foods which began yesterday in Scotland was
little more than an apology for the global biotechnology industry.
A handful of environmental groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of
the Earth were invited to the conference, as well as one scientist
known for his opposition to GM foods and an outspoken consumer rights
group. But activists said that was not enough to counter dozens of
representatives from biotechnology companies and scientists keen to
promote research and commercialisation of GM crops and foods.
"The overall weight of the conference is skewed toward scientists and
industry officials who are in favour of GM foods," Robin Harper, a
Green Party member of the new Scottish Parliament, told a news
conference. Activists, holding a separate, smaller gathering about GM
foods in offices of the new Scottish parliament, said U.S. and
British regulators were not listening seriously enough to fears about
GM foods.
The U.S.-based Alliance for Bio-Integrity, a consumer activist group,
said a 1998 lawsuit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to
obtain mandatory testing of all GM foods had exposed serious doubts
among scientists within the FDA that GM foods were as safe as their
conventional counterparts. "People are eating these foods daily. We
need to face facts that there are a lot of scientists unsure about
the safety of GM foods and thoroughly test these products before they
are approved," Steven Druker, coordinator of the lawsuit, told the
news conference.
The FDA said its scientists who questioned the safety of GM foods
were doing their job as part of the agency's regulatory process, and
that their views were taken into account in the FDA's final policy.
Although it is confident GM foods widely used in the United States
are safe, the FDA is currently considering the labelling of GM foods
after three public consulations, said James Maryanski, biotechnology
coordinator at the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.
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